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About Take This Bread

Early one morning, for no earthly reason, Sara Miles, raised an atheist, wandered into a church, received communion, and found herself transformed–embracing a faith she’d once scorned. A lesbian left-wing journalist who’d covered revolutions around the world, Miles didn’t discover a religion that was about angels or good behavior or piety; her faith centered on real hunger, real food, and real bodies. Before long, she turned the bread she ate at communion into tons of groceries, piled on the church’s altar to be given away. Within a few years, she and the people she served had started nearly a dozen food pantries in the poorest parts of their city. Take This Bread is rich with real-life Dickensian characters–church ladies, millionaires, schizophrenics, bishops, and thieves–all blown into Miles’s life by the relentless force of her newfound calling. Here, in this achingly beautiful, passionate book, is the living communion of Christ.

“The most amazing book.”–Anne Lamott

“Engaging, funny, and highly entertaining . . . Miles comments, often with great insight, on the ugliness that many people associate with a particular brand of Christianity. Why would any thinking person become a Christian? is one of the questions she addresses, and her answer is also compelling reading.”–Booklist

“Powerful . . . This book is a gem [and] will remain with you forever.”–The Decatur Daily

“What Miles learns about faith, about herself and about the gift of giving and receiving graciously are wonderful gifts for the reader.”–National Public Radio

“Rigorously honest, Take This Bread demonstrates how hard–and how necessary–it is to welcome everyone to the table, without exception.”–San Francisco Chronicle

“Moving, delightful and significant.”–The Christian Century

Don’t miss the reading group guide in the back of the book.

About Take This Bread

“Mine is a personal story of an unexpected and terribly inconvenient Christian conversion, told by a very unlikely convert.”–Sara Miles

Raised as an atheist, Sara Miles lived an enthusiastically secular life as a restaurant cook and a writer. Then early one winter morning, for no earthly reason, she wandered into a church. “I was certainly not interested in becoming a Christian,” she writes, “or, as I thought of it rather less politely, a religious nut.” But she ate a piece of bread, took a sip of wine, and found herself radically transformed.

The mysterious sacrament of communion has sustained Miles ever since, in a faith she’d scorned, in work she’d never imagined. In this astonishing story, she tells how the seeds of her conversion were sown, and what her life has been like since she took that bread.

A lesbian left-wing journalist who covered revolutions around the world, Miles was not the woman her friends expected to see suddenly praising Jesus. She was certainly not the kind of person the government had in mind to run a “faith-based charity.” Religion for her was not about angels or good behavior or piety; it was about real hunger, real food, and real bodies. Before long, she turned the bread she ate at communion into tons of groceries, piled on the church’s altar to be given away. The first food pantry she established provided hundreds of poor, elderly, sick, deranged, and marginalized people with lifesaving food and a sense of belonging. Within a few years, the loaves had multiplied, and she and the people she served had started nearly a dozen more pantries.

Take This Bread is rich with real-life Dickensian characters–church ladies, child abusers, millionaires, schizophrenics, bishops, and thieves–all blown into Miles’s life by the relentless force of her newfound calling. She recounts stories about trudging through the rain in housing projects, wiping the runny nose of a psychotic man, storing a battered woman’s .375 Magnum in a cookie tin. She writes about the economy of hunger and the ugly politics of food; the meaning of prayer and the physicality of faith. Here, in this achingly beautiful, passionate book, is the living communion of Christ.“The most amazing book.” – Anne Lamott

About Sara Miles

Sara Miles is the author of How to Hack a Party Line: The Democrats and Silicon Valley and co-editor of Directed by Desire: The Collected Poems of June Jordan and the anthology Opposite Sex: Gay Men on Lesbians, Lesbians on… More about Sara Miles

About Sara Miles

Sara Miles is the author of How to Hack a Party Line: The Democrats and Silicon Valley and co-editor of Directed by Desire: The Collected Poems of June Jordan and the anthology Opposite Sex: Gay Men on Lesbians, Lesbians on… More about Sara Miles

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Praise

Advance praise for Take This Bread

“A love song to the feast at the altar and the feast of a food pantry written with grit, authority and integrity.”–Nora Gallagher, author of Changing Light

“Sara Miles’s joy, confusion, and passion for the Christian life, together with her skill as a professional journalist and the fullness of her own humanity, have produced what has to be the finest confession of faith I’ve read in years. Take This Bread is a good, tight, absorbing read.”–Phyllis Tickle, author of The Divine Hours and former Religion Editor for Publishers Weekly

“This book is a stunner. Beautifully and simply written, it is a wonderfully straightforward account of a life and a conversion which will leave many readers, as it left me, tingling with longing that such signs and wonders might emerge in and through our own stories. Sara has come by the great truths of the Christian faith honestly. The story of how people grow through becoming empowered to be givers, and not mere receivers of handouts is a wonderful glimpse at a true emergence of Church.”–James Alison, Catholic theologian, priest, and author of Faith Beyond Resentment

“Some books you can’t put down, some you shouldn’t–this one’s both. Sara Miles’s story of spiritual nourishment recalls Patch Adams, but she’s also a writer like John Muir or Jane Addams, a gifted stylist whose passion translates to vivid storytelling. Take This Bread is necessary reading, I would think, for anyone who’s ever taken a bite out of anything.”–J. C. Hallman, author of The Devil is a Gentleman

From the Hardcover edition.

Author Q&A

A Conversation with Sara Miles

Random House Reader’s Circle: You use the phrase “eating Jesus”in your book. What do you mean by that? What is the differencebetween “finding Jesus,” a term we hear often, and “eating Jesus”?

Sara Miles: As an adult convert, I think I heard the invitationto eat the body of Christ and drink his blood as somethingfresh and shocking—not as a symbolic phrase dulled by yearsof repetition. It hit me the way it hit the first disciples, whofound the idea completely disturbing. To say that communionmeans we are “eating Jesus” reminds me of how risky—andhow thoroughly physical—the encounter with God is.

RHRC: You write about both physical and spiritual hunger.What do you see as the causes of hunger?

SM: Most of the people who come to get free groceries at ourfood pantry are working people with kids. They simply don’tget paid enough: At minimum wage, they can’t afford to provideboth food and rent for their families. But the scandal ofhunger in this country goes way beyond individuals living inpoverty: It’s a political issue involving the whole wasteful,oversubsidized agricultural system, which fails to feed evenmiddle-class people well.

As a nation, we ’re obsessed with food, afraid of it, anddeeply out of touch with what it means to sit down and eat realfood with other people. We ’re surrounded by abundance,we’re fat, and we ’re starving.

Spiritually, I think we ’re hungry because we believe we caneat only with the right people. And we’re hungry becausewe’re afraid to put the wrong thing in our mouths.

RHRC: What’s been the most surprising response you’ve receivedto Take This Bread?

SM: Some of the most gratifying responses to my book comefrom people who have committed their lives to feeding others;it’s inspiring to hear their stories.

I’m also deeply moved by letters of support and blessingfrom people whose political and theological views are verydifferent from my own—conservatives who think homosexualityis wrong, evangelicals who think liberalism is ridiculous,atheists who can’t stomach the idea of religion at all. I’veheard from Salvation Army officers, Orthodox priests, radicalCatholics, and Mormon housewives.

Their generosity and openness to the message of TakeThis Bread reinforces my faith that the Holy Spirit blowseverywhere—frequently knocking down denominational andpolitical walls.

RHRC: What are the biggest challenges to your faith that youface on a daily basis?SM: Oh, my own mind is probably my biggest challenge—mybossy nature, my impatience, and my desire to be right. Istruggle every day to be less controlling and more open tochange and to seeing God in the most unexpected places and inthe most unlikely people.

RHRC: What do you recommend for Christians who disagreewith a lot of the right-wing evangelical rhetoric dominatingthe political landscape?

SM: First, do something. Feed, heal, help. Don’t just argueabout ideology. Second, pray for your enemies. Don’t praythat they become different, or start doing what you want themto do. Just pray for them.

You don’t get to practice Christianity by hanging out withpeople who are like you and believe what you believe. You haveto rub up against strangers and people who frighten you andpeople you think are misguided, dangerous, or just plain wrong.

RHRC: And what recommendations would you make to leftistswho find no room for religion?

SM: Again, do something. Feed, heal, help. Don’t just argueabout ideology. Second, understand that secular leftists and religiousleftists of many faiths have worked together to makepolitical change throughout history. You don’t have to wait toact until everyone agrees on every point of doctrine. Being aleftist isn’t about being pure: It’s about being willing to workwith other people for justice and for human rights across theboard.

RHRC: What do you most want readers to walk away withfrom Take This Bread?

SM: I hope that readers, whether or not they’re religious, willbe able to take away Jesus’ message: Don’t be afraid. Thatthey’ll find ways to act; to feed others, to accept being fed byothers; that they’ll be willing to open up to people very differentfrom themselves.